blacks get ripped on tips

I won't get into the details of how this paper on race and tipping was extremely relevant to some work that I was doing. But it is an interesting paper.

If I were to summarize it in a sentence, that sentence would be, "Other things equal, both blacks and whites tend to tip black waiters less than they would white waiters."

The end of the article takes a logical, though surprising leap. Since the supreme court has ruled that a company can be held accountable for the actions of it's customers and the civil rights act makes unlawful anything that has a disperate impact on any group . . . tipping should be illegal under the civil rights act.


An attorney I talked to about it described this conclusion as "complete bullshit". And I'm inclined toward disbelief myself, though I find that when I grope for reasonable reasons, I'm not quite sure I find any.

ps. does anybody know where you would find data on commute times by job type? Department of Transportation doesn't keep it.